My site, www.2005calendar.com was ranked #2 for the keywords: 2006 calendar. It was mostly # 2 for a couple of months but went up and down between there and #8. It was being crawled by Google nearly every day. At the October update it went to every 13 days for all my sites. At the last Google update in October it disappeared. It came back to #2 for a few hours, (based on a visitors spike) bounced around between 20 and 300 for a few days, and the disappeared completely. I know I lost a PR7 link around the 1st of October. I have replaced it with 5 PR7 links, all on different IP addresses. I am still in the top 3 on MSN: I was #1 but changed the title and went to # 3. That had no impact on Google. I experiemented with a blog for a couple of months. The blog is at http://www.calendar6.blogspot.com/. The #2 position solidified right after I added an RSS feed on My Yahoo to the blog. I have now removed the RSS and deleted a lot of links from the blog. Google shows 66 back links and MSN 1600+. I have added links a few at a time from various sources. Anyone have any thoughts?
its hard to say exactly why... After a quick glance at your site, i would say that you have overused the keyphrase "2006 Calendar" - Nearly every sentence has one or both terms. Try adding some content to the page and bring down your keyword density. Are you using any "black hat" techniques" that G might not like? That may have also played a role. I would spend some time looking at the sites that are in the top ten and see what they are doing that you are not. Try to repeat some of the things they are doing on their site that you are not. Also, you are competing with some pretty heavy hitters. The top sites appear to be PR7 & PR8. That gonna be some stiff competition.
Is this site more than just an affiliate site? If not, I'd think that is your primary reason for dropping. Looks like a calender.com affiliate? Am I wrong? Its also a pretty bad example of a scraper site too: From: http://www.2005calendar.com/site/716315/page/609772 Why'd it drop? Keyword stuffing.
Thanks for looking. You are suggesting that they blackballed me because I have too many keywords? That's as good as anything Ive heard. Yes, most of the site is affiliate related to calendars.com. Are you aware of sites dedicated to affiliates being banned? No, don't think I'm using any "black hats" since I don't know what they are. Thanks for feedback. I will try reducing keywords significantly. It is obvious that the sites at the top hardly mention those keywords.
Despite the percentages of Keyword density that some people might try to throw at you, a good rule of thumb for keyword density is: Use keyword once per paragraph. Paragraph has 4-5 sentences.
I've read somewhere (and can't for the life of me, remember where) that keywords, even in content, are no longer really looked at. This guy did a study of many sites that ranked well, and for those pages that ranked well, many had the keyword once, sometimes, not at all, on a page. The thrust of his article was that the pages which seemed to rank were those that were simply well written - no typos or misspellings, paragraph structure clean and easily followed. In other words, written to be a service to the viewer and not spider food. Don't have the article or any evidence whatsoever. But I wonder if google is getting better at discerning any attempt at SEO - any attempt at all, as reflected by keyword densities following some type of pattern across pages, for example, for on-site optimization; or off-site strategies in the way of linking, etc.
Education is the name of the game... just because you don't know what they are certainly doesn't imply that you're not using them. Look around on DP, there are lots of threads available about SERP's dropping for various reasons -also google it and you're likely to find some good resources regarding what google likes/doesn't like. here's a good place to start. seems pretty current and up to date, may not be 100% accurate but certainly has some good ideas. http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm